Bagration Soup

We had a finale dinner for War & Peace tonight, the novel our book group (at least, some of us) have just finished reading. (Aside -- I mostly liked it, except for Tolstoy's philosophizing on the causes of events and history). I made Bagration Soup for our dinner, named after General Bagration who was a major player in the early sections of the book. The soup prep was long and sometimes unnecessarily complicated (cook barley, puree barley, cook spinach, puree spinach, prepare veal quenelles, etc.). This was even without making the white beef stock from scratch (I used a hodge podge of stocks I had around) and subbing frozen spinach (I mean really, it's just going to get pureed!). The quenelles involved sauteeing onions, soaking & mashing bread, mixing together with ground veal and other items, forming mixture into two long rolls, wrapping in cheesecloth, simmering, cooling in different water than they were simmered in (why? I don't know), getting unwrapped and sliced up, then finally combined with the soup, which is yet more broth, thickened with egg yolks and cream, then mixed with the pureed barley and spinach, then poured over the quenelles. Which, incidentally, weren't called to be reheated from their cooled state, but I microwaved them anyhow. I also microwaved the barley/spinach mixture, which she called for keeping hot over a double boiler. Uh, no.

Was it worth it?

Well, I'm glad I made it for the finale dinner. Now I'm tossing the recipe in the recycling bin, because I don't ever need to do that again!